HistoricPlacesLA is the first online information and management system specifically created to inventory, map, and help protect the City of Los Angeles' significant historic resources. It showcases the city's diversity of historic resources, including architecturally significant buildings and places of social importance as well as historic districts, bridges, parks, and streetscapes. You can search for specifics or try some popular seaches, and the map view let's you combine different overlays and base maps.
posted by Room 641-A
on Feb 28, 2015 -
6 comments

Amsterdam wants to be smarter than you. And it’s well on its way.
The Netherlands capital is on a mission to turn itself into the smartest city in the world. Through a collaboration with government officials, private companies including telecom giant KPN, and the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, the city is quickly becoming a futuristic tech hub.
posted by ellieBOA
on Jan 25, 2015 -
14 comments

The good people at Information Is Beautiful took the data from the "75+ classic cocktail recipes from the International Bartender’s Association’s list of drinks every bartender should know" and turned into into a beautiful reference chart. As an added bonus, they converted the ingredients to proportions for easy scaling. Cheers!
posted by Room 641-A
on Jan 10, 2015 -
63 comments

I’ve taught "introduction to research methods" to undergraduate students for many years, and they would sometimes ask me why they should care about all this "method stuff", besides having a required class for a sociology major out of the way. I would always tell them, without understanding research methods, you cannot understand how to judge what you see.

Movies and television shows often reflect cultural trends of the time they are made in. Even movies that take place during the past or future can say something about the present through metadata or production style. Using the Bookworm platform, Benjamin Schmidt, an assistant professor of history at Northeastern University, provides a tool that lets you see trends in movie and television dialogue.

You are a particle physics researcher. Particle Clicker is a resource accumulation game in the same mould as Cookie Clicker - but this time with particle physics research, academics, and funding. Click repeatedly on the Collider to generate data. Turn data into research to gain funding and increase your reputation. Spend your funding on Human Resources and Upgrades - don't forget to buy beer to keep your research students happy, and coffee to keep them awake! [more inside]
posted by Wordshore
on Aug 7, 2014 -
33 comments

Randy Olson is conducting an analysis of chess since 1850. What's the advantage of playing white? Are games getting longer? What openings have fallen in and out of vogue? Are chess players becoming less focused on capturing pieces?
posted by Chrysostom
on May 29, 2014 -
26 comments

Ben Goldacre, The Guardian: "Today we found out that Tamiflu doesn't work so well after all. Roche, the drug company behind it, withheld vital information on its clinical trials for half a decade, but the Cochrane Collaboration, a global not-for-profit organisation of 14,000 academics, finally obtained all the information. Putting the evidence together, it has found that Tamiflu has little or no impact on complications of flu infection, such as pneumonia." [more inside]
posted by Wordshore
on Apr 10, 2014 -
79 comments

# of seasons × # of episodes per season × runtime of episode = total for 1 TV show. Repeat for more TV shows = total time.Tiii.me lets you select the name of a tv show, the number of seasons you've watched, and tells you how much of your life you've spent watching that show. Add more shows and it will keep a running total for you. [more inside]
posted by Room 641-A
on Apr 6, 2014 -
32 comments

PLOS’ New Data Policy: Public Access to Data "PLOS has always required that authors make their data available to other academic researchers who wish to replicate, reanalyze, or build upon the findings published in our journals.
In an effort to increase access to this data, we are now revising our data-sharing policy for all PLOS journals: authors must make all data publicly available, without restriction, immediately upon publication of the article. Beginning March 3rd, 2014, all authors who submit to a PLOS journal will be asked to provide a Data Availability Statement, describing where and how others can access each dataset that underlies the findings." Openscience.org also have a primer on why open science data is important.
posted by jaduncan
on Feb 25, 2014 -
20 comments

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